


Eros the Bittersweet

by ThePiningTrees



Category: The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Bakery, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Alternate Universe - Restaurant, Baker!Cobb, Chef!Din, Childhood Friends, Found Family, Inspired by the book Sweetbitter, Light Angst, M/M, Miscommunication, Mutual Pining, Recreational Drug Use, Sappho as quoted by Danler, Slow Burn, Stress baker Cobb, Swearing, They are 17 in flashbacks, fucking idiots, quotes by Stephanie Danler, restaurant owner!Din
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-03-07
Updated: 2021-03-07
Packaged: 2021-03-13 10:09:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,008
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29899527
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThePiningTrees/pseuds/ThePiningTrees
Summary: Cobb Vanth is a proud small business owner and (stress) baker. He’s doing fine, thank you for asking.Meanwhile, Din Djarin is the asshole (high school sweetheart, now 43, single and the most gorgeous archenemy Cobb has ever seen) who left town with no explanation and didn’t bother to show his face until twenty five years later, when he opens the high-end restaurant “Satine” across the street to Cobb’s humble little bakery.I mean, the nerve!
Relationships: Din Djarin/Cobb Vanth
Comments: 11
Kudos: 28





	1. Stand and face me, my love

**Author's Note:**

> Yeeeeah, this fic is shameless Procrastination with a capital P. 
> 
> Thank you to the discord for, perhaps not enabling, but for being a group of crazy kids. You’re all right, I guess.... (fucking awesome that is)

_Eros once again limb-loosener whirls me_

_Sweetbitter, impossible to fight off, creature stealing up._

—Sappho, translated by Anne Carson, _Eros the Bittersweet_

Really, if it hadn’t been for Fennec Shand and her ’on a whim’ impulse to bring with her the latest issue of the Coruscant food magazine to the bakery, Cobb would’ve had a perfectly normal, ulcer-free morning. 

Gastric ulcers weren’t unheard of in the lives of ardently working bakers and small business owners, and that certainly applied to Cobb Vanth. He had worked hard to get where he was: he’d waitered all through culinary school, working part-time as a baker through business school, and (im-)patiently waited for years for a locale to rent and for the bank to approve. He might even be so bold as to claim that _he_ was the real working class hero here, and not the unreasonably attractive chef Din Djarin, 43, single, straddling a chair in the middle of his huge restaurant while giving the camera smoldering bedchamber ’come here and sit on my lap’ eyes. 

(This was not only according to Cobb’s imagination, oh no! This was carefully premeditated!)

The glossiness of the page was mocking Cobb with it’s fakeness, selling a success story about an underdog that couldn’t be true. Cobb had _known_ Din Djarin, back in high school. The facts just didn’t add up. Neither did the fact that his restaurant was opening up right across the street.

”You just don’t pop up from nowhere and buy the Grand with your aunt’s inheritance. I bet he can’t even cook. Look at those rolled up sleeves… and the buttons missing? Unhygienic. Cause for grease burn. And he’s wearing jeans, Fen, _jeans._ How does he sit down. I mean, how does he do it? I have seen him wear those jeans across the street and they are _al dente_ so to speak, really _al dente._ ”

”Your food metaphors do not add dignity to this conversation,” Fennec muttered, her focus still mostly on the screen of her laptop. She was going over her emails as part of her morning ritual. 

Cobb slammed down another croissant on the plate beside her. She’d already finished her breakfast, but he knew she liked to nibble. ”All I’m saying is that’s not an impression you want to make unless it’s your business ploy. The man has no culinary skills, so he’s building up a hype that won’t hold up in the long run.”

At least Din Djarin at 17 hadn’t had a clue about how to cook anything more advanced than a cup of instant noodles. And he had burned those, once. The microwave caught fire, and instead of putting out the fire Din had to open the window in his bedroom to air out the traces of the pot he and Cobb were smoking, just in case the fire department showed up. 

”Maybe you should stop ogling the pictures and actually _read_ the article,” Boba suggested, from where he was unloading the last batch of nutritious, multigrain loaf from the oven. In a bit he would nip out to deliver those to customers with standing orders, a few businesses and offices around the town, and restaurants and cafés. 

Boba was Cobb’s business partner, and Fennec’s boyfriend. She had a habit of accompanying him to work whenever she was able, sharing breakfast (and gossip) with them before opening time, and before she left for work at her own security firm. 

Cobb wondered if he should tell her that he knew who Djarin was. Would Boba know? They went to high school together, but limmie captain Boba hadn’t exactly moved in the same circles as Din, the, uh, lonely stoner kid. In fact, Cobb thought for a long time that he was the only one Din talked to back then. After graduation he had thought… never mind. 

The bell above the door rang, announcing that they were receiving their first customer for the day, and that they had forgotten to lock the door when they entered this morning. Cobb looked at the clock. It was 7 am on the dot. Huh. 

”I got it.” He waved to Fennec, who was wiping croissant crumbs from her mouth and packing up her stuff, and ventured through the door to the café area. 

The bakery wasn’t a big place, but it was designed to his tasting in the color palette of the sun setting over the desert, and often tempted even the most stress-out visitors to park their butt in one of the comfortable chairs or sofas. Cobb wanted people to set aside their heavy burdens and just relax for a moment. He kept everyone’s senses engaged with a background aroma of freshly baked goods and grinded coffee beans. His own, experimental creations were on display next to the register: sugar-sweet pastries and cakes, some with filling so tart in taste that it made your eyes water. To everyone’s amusement and/or eyeroll, the place was named _Cobb’s cobbler._

Cobb almost always found the customers eyeing the glass display, but not this one. The man was still standing closer to the door than the display, scratching his neck and looking around with a pinched brow. 

Cobb froze with his hands untying the apron behind his back. ”Can I help you?” 

Din Djarin looked back at him with an air of slight embarrassment. His dishevelled hair made it look like he’d just woken up and decided to grab a coffee on the go. It also made him look like the school boy Cobb once knew. He had carded his fingers through that hair, used it by the handful to angle Din’s face just right for Cobb to lean down with a kiss. 

”Oh. Hi. Good morning.” Din’s voice was a grown man’s voice now, but still soft and gentle, with an endearing quiver that sent Cobb’s heart rate into overdrive. ”It’s not too early is it? I mean, you are open?” 

Cobb nodded mechanically. ”...Sure.” 

Din motioned with his thumb over his shoulder. ”I own the restaurant across the street. I thought I should come by and introduce myself. I’m making my round through the neighborhood. Here. I brought you a housewarming gift.” He held up the fancy wine bottle that he’d been hiding behind his leg. “It’s from my wineyard. Everyone gets one.”

 _Way to make a boy feel special._ Cobb hummed non-committedly. ”Okay.” 

It was weird. Not only to find out what his high school crush looked like as a mature adult and that he preferred pinoir before Coke nowadays, but to have him standing there after Cobb almost had a seizure over his magazine spread. ”I know who you are. You’ve got a very photogenic face. Obviously, the camera loves you.”

 _Loves you_. The words fell thick in the air, hovered like monstrous beasts in the distance between them. Cobb thought he heard the dry rasp of Din’s inhale. It could’ve been the AC. 

“Anyway. I’m kinda in the middle of something.” Cobb motioned his chin towards the back. He felt rotten. 

Din kept looking at him from underneath the safe cover of his lashes, gaze tied to Cobb’s with an invisible line. Slacking. His front teeth worked his lip. “Okay,” he said at last, echoing Cobb from earlier. He hesitated. “Then I shouldn’t keep you.”

He put the bottle down on a nearby table. 

“Thank you.” Cobb’s tone was emotionless. He couldn’t feel his face. 

The bell above the door chimed as it was opened and closed. Cobb’s lungs were aching from holding his breath. 

_What the hell happened?_

~*~

He had read the article, in fact. He never confessed to Fennec or Boba that the issue she brought was two days old and he had practically snatched it straight from the printers when he saw the cover.

He had read the article ten times over by the time he closed up shop that evening and walked home, with the brisk pace he reserved for nights when he didn’t have the energy to go for a run or pretty much do anything more strenuous than wallow in front of the tv. 

He was alone in the apartment he shared with Werlo, since it was Thursday and Werlo worked as a bartender downtown. Cobb cozied up in the couch corner under the intricately woven blanket he had owned since forever, and re-read the damn article a final time, with Hozier in the speakers and a glass of Din’s wine in his hand for courage. Drinking Din’s wine was probably counterintuitive, and self-destructive and he wasn’t particularly proud of it, but he couldn’t think of a better way to let the matter go than to roll with the punches (which meant stepping in front of the punches and just take it until it stopped hurting, which probably would coincide with a steep plunge in his sobriety). 

According to the article, Din had accomplished quite a lot over the years, and that Cobb couldn’t take away from him. He _was_ the proud owner of a wineyard, which he had started from scratch and still operated. He had been adopted by his aunt Satine and her husband Obi-wan and moved away from his hometown shortly after graduating high school. ‘ _And never looked back.’_

He had lived a comfortable life with his rich aunt, who he considered as his mother now. He had been offered to travel the world, and he had ‘ _discovered the true meaning of love and family.’_

Cobb swallowed down the sudden jealousy he felt at those words. It was the wine. It gave him heartburn. (It was actually the best wine he’d ever remember tasting.)

Din had even become a father, to a kid that had come across his path by pure chance and changed his life irrevocably. Opened his heart, to what was important in life. ‘ _For what was possible.’_

Cobb downed the last of the rich red wine and grimaced. Whoever wrote the article sure knew how to play on the heartstrings of the readers. Suckers. He knew what made copies sell, and he knew that the man described was no hero. 

No, he was a shithead. A regular shithead, who abandoned his friends at the first opportunity _and never looked back._

“I meant something to you… you… meant something to me.” But not a word was written about lazy afternoons in a twin bed. Listening to music and laughing and making out until their lips swelled to twice the size. Tinkering with their dirt bikes on the driveway to Cobb’s parents’ house, ditching school to race each other in the sandpits behind the industrial park. A kiss turning to lazy grinding in the sand dunes and promising each other that this _, ‘this with you, is where I’m most happy.’_

They would gaze up at the sky and imagine all the things they would do when they turned eighteen, even pictured worlds, ancient and future, that merely existed in their shared imagination. 

Cobb was standing in his bedroom with the bottle still in hand. He swung the last drop and almost lost his front teeth in the process. Din loved his front teeth, he thought they were cute and made Cobb look like a hamster. He even licked Cobb’s gums once and it tickled. Now, Cobb was glaring at the label on the bottle with a look of severe betrayal. One of those imagined creatures looked back at him: a mythosaur, blinking with blank indifference.

Cobb rifled through his wardrobe until he found _it_ , the evidence that he wasn’t going crazy. (That he’d been sane once.)

In a shoebox, among his old school albums, he recovered the bracelet. He scooped the string up and expected it to dissolve in his hands. The twinned leather was worn out but held together. Along the string were small charms still attached, tiny momentos of their love story, forged by Din himself in woodshop class. 

Cobb touched his thumb to each and every one: ‘the mudhorn’, the tiny replica of the bike engine that Cobb worked on perfecting, ‘the mythosaur’, and the shard of what he believed was a fossilized dinosaur but Din had chosen to call it a ‘krayt dragon’. 

Din had pressed the bracelet into the palm of Cobb’s hand during one of those make out sessions in the sand. Too shy to articulate what he felt. 

Cobb held the bracelet up for drunken inspection. How come Din got to keep a personal connection to the mythosaur, but didn’t even remember who Cobb was? Had he _wanted_ to forget, or did the indifference develop over time?

Cobb had thought he knew what the bracelet meant, but could he have been _wrong?_

“Fuck you, Din Djarin. Fuck you for being a predictable asshole who realizes that everything’s possible and _open a fucking restaurant!_ You are dead to me,” Cobb declared, and went to the bed with the firm intention of passing the fuck out. 


	2. Once, when we were wild

**_SWEET:_ ** _granular, powdered, brown, slow like honey or molasses. The mouth-coating sugars in milk. Once, when we were wild, sugar intoxicated us, the first narcotic we craved and languished in. We’ve tamed, refined it, but the juice from a peach still runs like a flash flood._

_—Stephanie Danler , Sweetbitter_

Din Djarin returned to his hometown like some kind of prodigal son, or that’s how the journalist Horatio Sanz was going to spin it at least. A local boy who had never attended college, returning in style. Din exchanged a suffering glance with his cousin Bo ( _‘Save me?’_ ), but wasn’t in the mindset to argue Sanz’ vision. He obediently took the corpulent food journalist on a tour through the restaurant on the eve of the grand premiere, knowing they would benefit from the publicity. 

His fingers twitched nervously by his hip, and he wondered if he looked like the nervous wreck he truly was. He looked like an out-of-work bum at the moment, too afraid to change into his tailored chef outfit. Not as long as the sweat stains under his arms kept expanding. 

Everything in his life was about to change, to change tonight, if the right person showed. 

“The Grand is not called the Grand anymore,” Sanz remarked, as he did his best to not collide with the furniture. The waiters were putting the final touches to the table pieces, enhancing the ambiance with lambent candlelight and white egret orchids, in honor of Din’s mother. “What do you think the locals will say about you changing the name of a town legacy?” He bent closer to one of the flower vases and sniffed the faint perfume scent. “Who’s Satine? A paramour? Long lost love?” 

Din twitched. 

“Satine is my aunt. She let me move in with her when I was eighteen… saved me from a life I was tired of living. She passed away a few months ago.” He refused to reveal that he had been calling Satine ‘mom’ for most of his life. He grabbed a random chair and swirled it around on its axis before sitting down facing the food critic. It felt advisable to have the back of a chair as a safety precaution between him and the infuriating little man. He was being too nosy, and it was imperative that he didn’t come closer to the real truth behind the return. “Why must the readers know about my private life?” 

“...naming your restaurant after a mother figure. The self proclaimed Freudians in the community will _love_ that. But not as much as the single readers will love your marital status. No offense.” Horazio tapped a finger to his chin. “Hm… ‘Our handsomely rugged single parent, standing in the fluttering cape made of white linen, from the tables in the restaurant he saved from dust mites and decline. Mourning the loss of—“

“Okay, that’s enough!” Din was feeling his face grow hotter than the stoves in the kitchen. Why did he have to suffer through this humiliation? For his sins? 

Ask the right person and the answer would be _yes._ He did have things he felt terrible about, things he was trying to rectify. A long lost love he wanted to apologize to. His childhood sweetheart Cobb Vanth. 

Din hoped Cobb would show up as a guest tonight. He had chickened out on a personal invitation and invited the whole neighborhood, at least the business owners. He thought it would increase his chances to make friends and Cobb would see how much effort he put in at being amicable and responsible (even though he was a coward). Bo said a ‘block party’ would help prevent any potential turf posturing over parking spaces and thus decrease the risk of a war of attrition. Or in this case, ‘a war of nutrition.’

He reminded her that A. She wasn’t in the Army anymore but he was pleased she had regained her sense of humor, and also please stop, and B. she wasn’t supposed to think strategically, not since their adoptive father had told her to ‘Relax. Take some time off, and stop planning every moment in your life to the last detail. Break a few windows,” Obi-Wan had added with a goofy smile. 

Obi-Wan’s words to Din after Satine’s death had been similar: ‘Do you still think what matters in life can be measured in quantity? You have a son now. Your mother was grateful for every moment she got to spend with him. That’s what matters, Din. Now, think carefully. Do you believe you have achieved what you wanted out of life?’

Din knew he hadn’t. It took him a few nights of restless wandering around in his house, then a walk along the crest of his fruit garden as the chill morning mist rose from the wine terraces below. But he got there in the end, as the first rays of the pale sun kissed his face: he knew what he had to do. 

He had to return home.

“Hold that pose,” Sanz said and snapped his picture.

~*~

He had waited in vain for Cobb to show that night of the premiere. The day after was over before it began, lost to a whirlwind of chores on a list. The week passed in a blur, everything still new and bright and ill-fitting, and when the first month had passed, Din’s restaurant was thriving but he hadn’t accomplished anything he was truly proud of. Nothing that mattered. 

He went to Cobb’s once, the bakery across the street. It was on a whim, spurred on by the brisk spring breeze pushing him forward. He was sleepy and had probably worked too hard if he thought about it, but if this stunt was gonna work he had to refrain from thinking. He snagged a wine bottle from the shelf where he kept his own produce, with a thin gameplan to show Cobb the label to jug his memory with the mythosaur if he didn’t remember Din. 

Twenty five years had come and gone, after all. 

He knew he had made a mistake the second he stepped past the chiming doorbell. 

Cobb’s place was gorgeous, and screamed of the owner’s personal taste: the warm vermillion cushions in the sofa, the locally weaved throw blankets, the art on the walls (one creation looked like parts of an engine reassembled to look like a robot, and two iron bars mounted in a crisscross fashion resembled spears). Din read the funny, weird names on the pastries listed above the counter, that brought on an onslaught of nostalgia (he could hear Cobb laughing) and realized that _no, nope, nu-uh,_ he wasn’t near ready for this confrontation. Before he knew it he had backtracked across the floor. 

He almost jumped out of his skin when Cobb stepped out from the back with a neutral expression, asking the question every other customer was asked: “Can I help you?”

Din choked. _He doesn’t know who I am. Abort, abort!_

”Oh. Hi. Good morning.” He tugged at his hair in quiet despair. _Does my voice sound squeaky? Fuck, why must my voice sound squeaky? Why doesn’t he remember me?_ He decided to stall until he knew what to do. ”It’s not too early is it? I mean, you are open?” 

”...Sure.” 

Cobb looked like he was waiting impatiently for the customer to stop chatting and just order already. The adorable put-off expression on his face was identical to the expression he used to get when Din made him taste this or consider a new wild idea or try some new stunt with the dirt bike Din had come up with. Cobb was an old man even at 17, traditional and not one for new experiences if Din wasn’t there to smooth the waters.

Or stoke the flames. 

Din motioned with his thumb over his shoulder. ”I own the restaurant across the street. I thought I should come by and introduce myself. I’m making my round through the neighborhood. Here. I brought you a housewarming gift.” He held up the wine bottle and hoped it would stop him from rambling. “It’s from my wineyard. Everyone gets one.”

He surreptitiously angled the label so that the mythosaur could be clearly seen. A coward’s last resort—it wasn’t his proudest moment. 

“Okay,” Cobb deadpanned. 

This was not going well. Din felt his panic rise and squeeze his lungs. He shouldn't have waited so long. He should’ve come here the first thing he did, on his first day back in town. He should’ve done this years ago!

“I know who you are.” Cobb spoke like a stranger, reducing Din to a dude on a page, a face in a magazine. “You’ve got a very photogenic face. Obviously, the camera loves you.”

 _Loves you._ The words ate through decades of time, excavating those words spoken by a seventeen year old Cobb Vanth with such sweet tenderness, pouring like honey in Din’s ear. _Love you._

He had never been able to say it back. A pattern that would prove fatal. Din knew he had done something awful, something _unforgivable_ by moving away during the late summer after high school graduation, in the middle of Cobb’s college preparation frenzy. Back then, Din’s naive, egoistic self had rationalised the whole thing: he thought Cobb would be relieved to get rid of him, thought he was saving Cobb from the embarrassment of having a deadbeat boyfriend stuck in their hometown. 

He thought he saved them both the heartache by leaving one morning with his stuff in a duffle bag, not even calling Cobb from the road to explain. 

He thought a postcard from Chile and then one from the Gold Coast would help Cobb realize that Din had a better life now, that he was with his aunt and her family and they had asked him to stay, as one in the family. Cobb didn’t need to worry, because he was happy, he was safe, and for the first time in his short life he felt like he could breathe.

Well, his strategy worked. It worked so well that Cobb had erased him from existence. 

He didn’t need Din to come here and insert himself in his life uninvited. Afterall, he had declined Din’s invitation. 

Message received. 

Din’s gaze lingered on Cobb’s face even as his eyes welled up, overwhelmed by the realization that this was very likely the last time he was able to look upon the love of his life. He chewed his lip to distract from the lump growing in his throat. 

Cobb said something, he didn’t hear what. He could barely hear his own answer. He got rid of the wine bottle and left, somehow, and kept walking until he found himself in the back alley behind his restaurant. 

He sank down with his back against the wall and buried his face in his hands and tried to roll with his heaving breaths. Then, when the worst had passed he just sat there with his head against the brick, a strip of unreachable blue sky watching from above, and waited for the pain to leave his heart. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It’s crazy what you can get done when you’re not allowed to go outside. I will be joining humanity again tomorrow, so expect a little delay on the next part of this fic.


End file.
